Wanting to go home

[Jessie107]

Hello,
Since having a bad fall my mother's dementia has excellerated and her mobility is not very good. My question is how to deal with her not believing she is at home, and wanting to go home, I have tried playing music, using distraction, walking her around, offering a warm drink but she gets stuck in this loop and gets very very angry indeed, I don't know what to do when she is like this, does anyone have any suggestions I could try?
Regards
Jessie

 

[lesley1958]

Jessie I am so sorry you and your mum are going through this.

As others on the list will attest the "going home" loop is very common indeed. My 92 year old dad has suffered this with terrible anger and verbal aggression to my mum because he was so desperate to "go home" in the evening to the place where things might start to make some kind of sense to his poor old mind.

We never found a way of distracting him I'm afraid. And I was so worried for my mum. Sometimes "we'll go tomorrow" would placate him for a while, but only sometimes.

We had to resort to medication. The consultant tried memantine at the end of 2015 but it made very little difference. In April 2016 the consultant started dad on 2 x 0.25mg respiridone daily, which he raised a month or so later to 1.25 mg per day - the dose dad is currently on. I don't know whether it is the progress of the disease of the risperidone but since mid-2016 the sundowning/evening agitation/going home has been easier to manage. It hasn't gone completely by any means but it tends not to last so long and not to be so severe. Dad is also still taking memantine.

My heart goes out to you Jessie - it is an awful, awful thing to try to deal with, so distressing and exhausting for the carer and the sufferer.

Thinking of you

Lesley

 

[velocity]

My Mother is asking to go home now, it is heartbreaking, I hope this fixation doesn't last too long but I am expecting it might. I just try to explain sometimes, that she can't but it doesn't seem to register. Then I willl say how busy I am and can't possibly go there (3her drive). There is also somebody else living there now Anything really, but she's stuck in a loop, possibly wants some form of conversation, and wants her independent life back, which is understandable. But its frustrating,
Mum forgets where her bedroom is now and quite often has to be shown where the door is from the sitting room, this is in the evening, but during the day she fine. Xx.

 

[Jessie107]

Thank you for your replys.
I rang the memory clinic this morning and they will be doing a second memory assessment end of the month, I will then be able to talk to them about some medication for the agitation.
Wow, this isn't easy to cope with at all, I myself have just found out that I have M. E so I should be avoiding stress! Pretty much impossible when looking after some one with dementia. I am so grateful that my brother and sister are helping as I would just not be able to do it.
Regards
Jessie

 

[Witzend]

It's a bit different, since she was in a care home and wanting to go back to her parents/ childhood home (didn't even exist any more), but I would say I couldn't take her today, because the roads were terribly busy/icy/closed because of a bad accident/my car was being serviced, etc. - 'But maybe we could go tomorrow?'
That usually kept her reasonably happy for the moment. Of course I would have to repeat it often, since her short term memory was practically zero.

The type of 'nice cup of tea' distraction never, ever worked with my mother, or at least not for more than about 30 seconds. She would come back to the same topic endlessly, like a wasp to a jam jar.

 

[Boz Rihan]

Going home

We have been in the same house together for 30 years. Mother cries and begs me to let her go home. It passes until the next time. We just muddle through. I don't think there are really any strict dos and donts as eavh PWD is different. Hard to communicate with PWD. Especially in the early hours of the morning when one us deprived of sleep. Good luck. xxx